Washington, DC – October 2014
George is practicing his new morning ritual. For three weeks now, every day upon entering his office, he does a sweep for bugs. He tries to do it subtly, and so far, he's crushed and drowned five listening devices. The fact that someone put one in his office again yesterday suggests that either there are an awful lot of bugs in circulation, or they've noticed he's destroying them. George is a good spy, but his downfall in this situation is that Conrad Dalton is, too.
There's no doubt that Dalton is running a counterintelligence operation against him. George has to run a counter-counterintelligence operation to keep his boss from catching on that he's the leak. And he has to protect the McCords in the process. He's more than willing to do that. He's brought Bess this far. And the more he thinks about it, the more he is willing to give his life for this mission if it should be his last. Operation Save Bluebird is all that matters to him now. It has multiple parts, and he needs to keep buying Bess and Hank time so they can complete stage one. Talking. The two need to talk. That is the only way they are going to survive. They need to make it right between them.
He's crushing the newest bug under the weight of his heel when Director Munsey pops his head in the door.
"Henry McCord is in LA?"
"What?" George feigns his surprise so expertly that even he believes himself. Munsey is standing with his hands on his hips, like an impatient father. A telltale sign of an interrogator. Munsey has always played the father in interrogations.
"George, I know about Bluebird," Munsey says, trying to break the older man of his act. He had a two-hour meeting with the President and Jessica Richardson this morning, learning all about Bess McCord's treacherous ways. He's been told to take care of the problem immediately.
"What about Bluebird? Bess is dead." George's face reads of grief to Munsey, but really, it's complete disgust at the threat he knows is coming. In a way, it's helpful to know for sure which side the CIA director will fall on.
Munsey doesn't say anything, and the silence is enough. George stands, walks over to his mini coffee bar setup, and takes his time pouring a cup of coffee, adding sugar and cream. It's a slow, casual move to try to keep his body language and demeanor nonchalant.
"C'mon, George. Did you send him there?" Munsey tries to match his sense of casualness by plopping down in a chair.
"Sir, I have no idea what you are talking about. Would you mind reading me in?" George asks, sitting back at his desk. "What exactly are we discussing here?"
"Henry McCord," Munsey snaps.
"Henry is in LA. Yes. But, sir, you just said that I sent him. And I would love to know what the fuck you are talking about." George chuckles at the end of his statement like he is the lead in some eighties buddy cop movie.
"McCord made a five-minute phone call the day before his impromptu trip to Los Angeles. The other phone was an untraceable burner. Has Bess told you she's talked to him? That wasn't supposed to be part of her deal. She's not supposed to be in contact with him."
George shakes his head in disgust. "Director, I have no idea what the hell is going on here. But I can assure you I have nothing to do with it."
"You're Bluebirds handler, handle her." Munsey stands to emphasize his threat, "Or you'll be handled." He walks to the door, "And then who knows what'll happen to the bitch."
Georges's fists clench at the name, but he keeps his expression neutral. Once the director leaves, he lets out a long breath. He knows he will give his life for Bess, and he has a feeling that is what he's going to have to do. But now, he needs to buy her as much time as he can.
Los Angeles, CA – October 2014
The drive is silent and awkward. Henry watches out his window, doing everything he can to avoid looking at her. She, on the other hand, has her eyes firmly planted on the road as she white knuckles the steering wheel at ten and two. She does nothing but take box breaths that she hopes he doesn't notice. The silence for the thirty-six-minute drive from the financial district to Playa Del Rey makes the drive seem like thirty-six hours. She almost turned on the radio to drown it out, but she couldn't bear to shift in her seat and risk looking at him.
When they arrive at the beach apartment, Henry takes it all in. He expected to see Elizabeth here. The Elizabeth he knows. But the clean white pictureless walls, huge windows, and the open floor plan are not the things he would picture his former wife to be in. There are a few pieces of decorative art that are neutral in color and, in his opinion, lacking in expression. The apartment is bright even with the lights off and has a wonderful view of the Pacific. There is a noticeable lack of personal effects—no books on shelves with dog-eared pages. No photos. No albums. Nothing that indicates she is the one living there, not so much as a coffee stain on her glass table. When did she get so anal about dust, he wonders as he runs a finger over the tv stand. It is all very cold and sterile. What he doesn't know is that the sterility of it all is purposeful. She has tried hard to make herself at home while leaving no traces of who she is. She hasn't decorated the way she used to. She hasn't bought trinkets or books. She reads on a Kindle, and she listens to Frampton on her phone. Also, she'll never admit that cleanliness is so important to her because of how grimy her prison had been. She has lived in filth, first in Iraq and then here in LA drug dens. Never again will she be in a place that isn't clean.
"So..." She trails off. She doesn't know what to say. They stand across the room from each other. "I'll get the files, and we'll talk?"
"Sure."
"You can sit." She tells him, gesturing to the couch. She leaves the room, bounding for the spiral stairs to her loft bedroom. When she disappears, Henry sighs. He is tired and confused. He doesn't know if he's prepared for this journey that life has unexpectedly put him on. But he knows he has to go forward for his sanity. He walks the length of the apartment. He stops and looks out the large windows and out at the ocean.
Upstairs, she crawls to the corner of her closet, opens the biometric lock on the safe, and then uses the secondary passcode. She pulls her copies of the thick file folders out of the safe and stands. Her arm throbs and she takes a minute to roll her shoulder through the pain. Then she scours the paperwork for her medical reports, including her rape kit, and removes them from the rest of the stack. He doesn't need to know everything. At least not today. She closes the safe and heads downstairs.
She finds him standing facing the window overlooking the ocean, his hands in his pockets and his eyes closed. He's praying. She knows his ways of prayer better than he must know. She stops a few feet behind him and watches him for a moment. She wonders if he got through her death with his faith intact or if this is the first time he's prayed in a while. She had always admired his ability to believe in a higher power and have an unshakeable faith. She, on the other hand, had been shaken, and her belief had disappeared long before she did. But she drew on his faith in Iraq, and maybe one day she'll tell him about it.
"Henry." She calls his name quietly.
He turns and looks at her. He looks so sad and so lost. And she hates herself for making him feel that way. She holds the file in front of her like a shield.
"How do you afford this apartment?" He breaks the ice with an inconsequential question. It seems easier.
"Senior Associate, largest accounting firm in LA County. And even then, honestly, barely." She smiles a little.
"You've never been much of a beach person." He reminds her.
"Yeah." She nods. She can't tell him about her newfound love of the ocean. She has a respect for its power. She remembers the night she got arrested and the suicide attempt that would've been completed if she hadn't been interrupted. That night, she had wanted the ocean's power to kill her, and now she likes to observe it. It's a way to remind herself that she beat those thoughts.
"How did you choose this place?" He asks, a little because he is genuinely interested in seeing how she lives now and a little because he is stalling. He's not ready to get serious again.
"I liked it." She shrugs. And he nods. The awkwardness between them is nowhere near fading.
"Do you have any whiskey?" He asks, knowing her long-day drink of choice. She nearly freezes.
"Uh, no... Sorry." She's not ready to tell him about that yet.
"Beer?" He asks again. He could use the catharsis that a drink can bring.
"I have water and green juice that tastes like dirt." she tries to deflect with a joke. "Or I can put some coffee on." She tries when it doesn't work. It doesn't work. He tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, and she swallows. "So water, coffee?"
"Water. Please."
"Okay. Yeah, I'll be right back." She heads into the kitchen, leaving him alone again. He sighs. He peers into her kitchen out of curiosity and smiles slightly at the boxes of Kraft mac and cheese and boxes of cereal lining the cabinets. Those are familiar to him. He's almost glad to see she hasn't learned to cook. That means part of her is the same as she's always been.
She returns with two glasses of ice water and sets them down on the coffee table. He sits and takes the glass, sipping.
"So," He looks up at her, "How do we start?"
"I was set up." She starts immediately. She figures the faster she can give him the information, the faster she can convince him that the safest thing to do is leave.
"How? Why?" He's not sure why anyone would want to do that to her. "Who could you have made so mad?" He doesn't mean to sound like he's blaming her. But that is the way she takes it. She thought her heart couldn't possibly break any more than it already had. She was wrong. It had taken her years of Dr. Sherman repeatedly telling her it wasn't her fault for her to start to believe that, and with a single sentence from Henry, the doubt of what she had done to deserve it starts creeping back in. To Henry's credit, there is no possible way he could have known that.
"I didn't piss anyone off. Conrad Dalton wanted someone to go away, and I was the price." She says through her teeth. Henry doesn't mean to, but he smiles and almost laughs. Conrad? Her best friend, Conrad? The new president of the United States, Conrad Dalton?
"Conrad?" He's amused.
"He's not the person you think he is." She snaps at him. He sobers immediately. He hears the heartbreak of betrayal in her voice. He can see her anger and pain. And she rolls her shoulder again this time. Not able to hide the wince at radiating pain. She's gotten good at dealing with the chronic, never-ending pain, but today, she can't focus enough to manage.
"So he knew? Did you guys talk? And he was okay with this? He was okay with you leaving us?" Henry asks, trying not to be angry.
"Henry, I don't think you understand. Conrad did this to me... To us... He set me up to be taken." She explains slowly.
"Why would he do that?" He asks. He thinks about the man who seemed so sad at the funeral. He eulogized her. He has checked on him and the kids. He held his twins when they were no more than five weeks old. No, she's going to have to find another scapegoat.
He looks up at her once again, notices her roll and stretch her shoulder for the third time in five minutes. His eyes narrow, and his head tilts again.
"I can only assume it's because he wanted to be President." She says sadly. She opens the first file. She flips past the photos, not wanting to scar Henry with the little bodies. She still dreams about the mother holding the dead toddler against her chest. Sometimes she thinks it's fucked up how she prefers that nightmare to the ones about the man. Another shoulder roll as she flips the second file to the page she wants.
"Babe, are you okay?" He sighs. Her shoulder rolls and winces are so noticeable that he doesn't care what's in the files. There's time to find that out.
"Yeah, it's fine." It's a habitual answer. Her shoulder is fine because it's never fine.
"That's not fine. You're in pain. Why are you in pain? What happened to your shoulder?" He looks at her. Right now, his anger has faded, and the answers to what she's been through are more important to him than who's responsible for her faked death.
"I'm fine. Please just read this." She tries. There is a desperate need to believe in her voice. She needs him to believe her; otherwise, maybe all that she's done to protect him has been for nothing.
"You're not okay." He realizes. He looks at her. She's in pain, so much more than physical. The last ten years have not been kind to her. It's not that she's not still strikingly beautiful because she is. But she's duller now in a way he can't quite place. He will listen to her about Conrad Dalton, and he's sure she'll be convincing. And he knows he'll believe her. He thinks back on the woman he once knew as his wife and the mother of his children. He remembers her in those days, and he knows in his heart that she would not disappear without a damn good reason.
"I'm sorry," he takes the files and the pictures gently out of her hands and places them on the coffee table, "You're not okay, and that matters more to me. What you've been through matters to me. We don't have to rush this conversation. We have time."
Tears fill her eyes as she looks at him. His sincerity is overwhelming. She had forgotten what it felt like to feel loved, not that she deserved his love, no matter the kind it may be. Platonic, familial... Certainly, it's no longer romantic.
"I-I can't tell you everything. It's not that I don't want to, but some of it..." She shakes her head.
"Hey, look at me." He says gently, wanting so badly to take her hand in his, and she looks up at him. "I know it was awful. I can deduce that much. I know it won't be easy to hear, and I promise I can temper my reaction. Please let me in. I can't think about anything else until I know that you are okay."
She looks into his eyes. He means it. She knows he does. She has missed him and the way he looks at her. The way he cares for her and loves her.
"I... Uh, I don't like talking about it." She says softly. It's not a lie. She doesn't talk about it outside of therapy appointments.
"We can do this slowly. How about you tell me about your shoulder? Just your shoulder."
"It was broken along with my collarbone... More than once." She goes to the easy answer. There are no details on how it got broken so many times or, rather, how it never healed completely after the first time.
"And how did it get broken so many times?"
She rubs her shoulder as she realizes the context of Conrad Dalton and Samuel Rodriguez makes no sense without the complete and complex picture of what the two of them did in Bolivia together and what Samuel Rodriguez did to her in Iraq as part of a fee owed by Dalton. Nor will her absence be completely explained without her story of survival. She has to tell him, no matter how hard it will be for both of them. So, she goes back to the beginning.
"After the explosion and the body switch... I woke up on the floor of what was essentially a concrete box. Well, a room made of concrete." She looks out at the ocean, not Henry; she can't look at him. If she does, she will lose her courage. "I spent over a year in that room with that man." She swallows her tears.
"Over a year?" He keeps the surprise in his voice as low as he can. He doesn't want to freak her out or make her shut down.
"Yeah," she nods, "I think the final total was like a year and five months. The whole timeline of it never stopped being blurry." She sighs.
"What happened there?" He asks softly.
"I was... It was the most dehumanizing experience..." She doesn't mean to dance around it. Therapy has helped her put this in words. She's not ashamed of using them. But this isn't Dr. Sherman, this is Henry. And to use the words torture, rape, beatings, and waterboarding with Henry in the context of her having to survive those acts is so hard. Telling someone she loves is so hard.
"Take your time."
She closes her eyes, and the memories flood back.
